


sculpt

by what_a_dork_fish



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Angst, Background - Freeform, Bad Flirting, Canon Disabled Character, First Meetings, Suicidal Thoughts, honestly Erik what were you trying to do, not a meetcute though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 07:09:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17741243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_a_dork_fish/pseuds/what_a_dork_fish
Summary: Strangers meet, and instead of the expected sparks of passion, the one is an asshole and the other gets defensive.





	sculpt

“What are you staring at?”

Charles starts and looks up into the eyes of the angry man at the other table. “Oh—I do apologize,” Charles says, and hastily looks away. No use telling the man that his legs, hairy though they are, are also very nicely shaped. If Charles were still sculpting—

But he isn’t a sculptor anymore.

“You’re Charles Xavier!” the man’s companion exclaims, her eyes widening in shock. “The artist!”

“Y-yes, I am,” Charles stammers, considerably taken aback. Not many people remember him. How odd.

The two are staring, the woman still shocked, the man suspicious. Charles can’t help blushing. “Um. I apologize for staring,” he says to the man, his tone a bit awkward. “I—I haven’t gotten out of the habit of—of looking for inspiration, I guess.”

“Inspiration?” the man repeats, even more suspicious. Charles nods, casting his eyes down and decidedly away from the man’s legs.

“Oh, that’s right!” the woman says, snapping her fingers. “You got kicked out for asking that one guy’s wife to model for you.”

Charles, his face now burning with humiliation, nods. Thankfully, at that moment, Raven arrives.

“Hey, Charles, sorry I’m late,” she sighs, plumping into the chair across from him. “Traffic was shit.”

Charles happily turns away from the strangers and to his sister. Hopefully he won’t die of embarrassment when he gets home.

~

During the first week of his disgrace, his old friends would try to convince him to take up sculpting again. Then the accident, which Charles is convinced was not actually an accident, broke his back and paralyzed his legs. After that, the friends stopped trying.

Charles gazes at the vase on the dining table that he made himself about a year ago, and wonders if Raven would be annoyed if he smashed it to pieces. He’d already smashed a few of the statuettes he’d made over the years, and she’d told him off for it.

How is he supposed to explain to her that remembering the joy he’d felt in creating is more bitter and painful than just the numbness of forgetting?

He remembers the man he’d been staring at, and wonders why he’d thought him beautiful enough to sculpt. The man had been absolutely normal. Strong build, runner’s legs, foreboding face—nothing to single him out. Charles wonders wearily if it’s just because Charles misses the flashes of inspiration he’d get from glimpses of people who probably wouldn’t think of themselves as “model material”.

The old woman he’d seen reading in the park, who had been skeptical, then flattered, then overjoyed when she saw that he had remembered every wrinkle and dimple. The couple who told him they were too fat for him to sculpt, and had beamed when they saw that he had created statues that were true to their size, but weren’t disgusting caricatures, and in fact had shown the liveliness of the woman and the tenderness of the man in their postures and faces. The deaf boy who had hugged Charles because he’d added his cochlear implant. The sickly young girl who was delighted to receive a painted china statuette of herself as a gymnast, and had in fact sent Charles a photo of her in her gymnastics uniform, still unhealthily thin, but grinning as she walked the highbeam all by herself.

The old, the young, the disabled, the outcasts; Charles has sculpted many of them, showing that they, too, are beautiful. And he misses those moments when they see that they are worthy.

He wants to know how they all are living. The people he once looked at and saw only how blazingly wonderful they were. The woman with the scarred arms, haunted eyes, and soft smile. The person who asked him to carve “gender is a myth” into the back of their statue. The father with his new baby.

Charles picks up the vase and wonders how hard he’ll have to fling it for it to shatter most satisfactorily against the wall.

“Don’t you dare.” Raven snatches the vase from him and set it down firmly out of his reach. “You’ve broken enough things. Why are you sad?”

“No reason,” Charles replies, looking up at her and not bothering to force a smile. “I’m just not at my best.”

Raven eyes him critically, then snorts and sits down in the chair next to him. “Fine. Keep lying. Eventually you’ll get tired of it. What do you want for dinner?”

They have pizza, and then they have an argument, and Charles does his best not to cry because he doesn’t want Raven to think he’s being manipulative, but he’s so tired of arguments. When they both retire for the night, she on the third floor, he on the first, he lies in bed and stares at the ceiling and thinks that maybe it would be better if he were dead.

~~~\0/~~~

Erik knew it was a mistake to wear these ridiculous pants that only reach his knees, but Emma had insisted that he dress for the weather. So short sleeves and short pants had been today’s lot, and look what that had gotten him—an artist who stared at his arms and legs and talked about “inspiration”. Sure. Inspiration for wanking, maybe.

“You’re so uncharitable, Erik,” Emma snorts when Erik tells her this. “That was Charles Xavier. A sculptor of international renown. His works have been compared to the carvings of Bernini. His subjects are… different, but no less beautifully rendered. You should google him.”

Erik scowls, and as soon as he’s alone in his room with his laptop, he does so.

Xavier’s preferred materials are clay and china, but he is also a fairly good woodcarver, and he painted all his own sculptures. His work is, indeed, different; his most famous ones are an old woman so exquisitely carved she looks real, and a person with a scarred chest wearing only boxer-briefs with “gender is a myth” inscribed on their back. Even in pictures, the old woman’s expression is soft and content, and the genderless person’s face is challenging and proud.

Erik looks for pictures of Xavier himself. Every photo of him that Erik can find is of him standing, beaming, young and excited.

Emma had said he’d been “kicked out”, though. And Erik noticed that he had been in a wheelchair at the café.

Erik looks for those despicable artist gossip websites Emma’s addicted to and finds several that tell in delicious detail how it was that Xavier was rejected from all the highest circles. He had apparently asked a woman if she would model for him, and while she had said yes, her husband, a great patron of the arts, had taken offense and had Xavier physically removed from the premises. There was more gossip about the disastrous row that followed, but Erik isn’t interested. He searches “Charles Xavier accident” and blinks to see so many results.

It appears Xavier had been walking across a street when a car came screaming around a corner and rammed into him, breaking many bones, but most importantly, paralyzing his legs. And that had put paid to his career.

There’s a few academic articles about Xavier being a rising star in the field of biology, specifically genetics, but he had stopped making art after the accident. He hadn’t even gone back to carving.

Erik frowns, then shrugs. A tragedy, to be sure, but not one that would stop anyone’s world but Xavier’s. Erik puts it out of his mind.

He has dreams of a sad, tired face and a soft voice saying, _I haven’t gotten out of the habit of—of looking for inspiration, I guess._

~

Erik wakes up grumpy.

Emma wants to go do things—they’re only here for a week and she wants to see as much of New York as she can between various formal visits—but Erik doesn’t. It’s summer, on an island. The heat is sticky compared to his native Germany, and he doesn’t like sweating anyway.

So Emma storms out in a temper, and Erik sits at his computer feeling grumpy and bored. All his emails are from rich people trying to bribe him, museums trying to collect his work, and his publisher threatening him with termination if he doesn’t finish that book on time. There’s a couple scam emails about renewing his family fortunes; he clicks on the delete button so hard he nearly breaks his mouse. He was Shaw’s “pet project” for so long, people have forgotten that Erik’s “adoption” was proven to be fake, and he had actually been kidnapped.

Erik hasn’t forgotten. He’ll never forget.

But eventually, he’s restless. He shuts everything down, fires off a text to Emma, and leaves for Central Park.

~~~\0/~~~

Charles shouldn’t be at the park, but he needs to get out of the house.

Too much memory, too much sadness; he needs to be in the sun, in a place that holds only happy reminders. So he hires a taxi and goes to Central Park.

He wheels down paths and gazes around at the sun on the grass and trees and flowers and people—and instead of peace, he feels at a loss. He finds a patch of shade under a tree but still on the path, and just stares around, feeling lost and distressed. There’s a phantom prickle in his left foot, but he knows nothing will ease it. His shoulders droop, his mouth turns down, tears prick his eyes, and he hangs his head. He shouldn’t be here. Not around all these other people who are walking freely and smiling. But selfishly, he wants to stay. Wants to inflict his gloom on the sunlit park.

He stares at his hands, fisted in his lap. What had Sandra said, when he told her he was out of the hospital and wanted to get back to sculpting? Something about how surely it would be impossible, since the studio wasn’t accessible, and wouldn’t he rather focus on getting well again?

_“I’ve already talked to the doctors, there’s no way—“_

_“Maybe they missed something!” Her voice had almost enraged him, it was so forcedly cheerful. “You never know! You might be able to walk again someday!”_

So Charles had never called her again, though she had tried often to contact him. And he’d withdrawn into his studies, because at least scientists are less likely to tell him there has to be a cure, once he explains what the doctor had said.

Charles is crying now, silently, tears oozing down his cheeks. He wants to bury his fingers in clay and make a sculpture that shows his anguish—but he can’t. It’s been too long.

“Hey.”

He blinks, and looks up before he can stop himself.

It’s the man from the café, the one with such lovely legs. His face is still stern and foreboding; perhaps he was born frowning. But when he sees that Charles is crying, his frown becomes uncomfortable.

“Pardon me,” Charles mumbles, ducking his head to wipe his eyes and face on his sleeve. He looks up again and tries to smile. “Yes?”

The man wavers, then sticks out his hand. “Erik Lehnsherr.”

Charles shakes the offered hand firmly. “Charles Xavier.”

“What were you crying about?”

“Oh—nothing in particular,” Charles replies, and his smile trembles. “I just thought it would be nicer out here and—I guess I was wrong.”

It is quite obvious that Erik doesn’t believe him. “I looked up some of your sculptures,” he says instead, and Charles immediately tenses. “Why’d you give it up?”

“Because I felt it was time to move on,” Charles tells him firmly. “I was getting stale—“

“Bullshit,” Erik interrupts. “I know stale art when I see it, I’ve been around artists enough. You were in your prime, and after the accident you gave up. Why?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Charles snaps back, tears replaced by anger. Who is this puppy, to say he knows Charles’ art better than Charles himself, to question why Charles has given up his heart’s passion for something safer? He has no right to try and pry intimate details out when they are barely strangers!

Erik narrows his eyes, then smirks. “At least you stopped crying,” he points out. Smugly, as if he’s _proud_ of driving Charles from misery to fury. “Are you doing anything later today?”

“Yes,” Charles replies in sharp tones, “And I hope you are too, as far away as possible.”

And, while Erik stares at him, somehow surprised by this, Charles unlocks the brakes on his chair and heads back to the park exit. Fury makes him shaky and brings the tears perilously close again. But his pride is stung, so he keeps his head up and does not cry at all.

Not until he’s in the taxi, that is, and has ground out his address. The he starts shivering, and tears drip down his cheeks. His anger is always short-lived. On its heels comes a wave of despair, and he can barely think beyond the next minute, the next moment of being alive.

Suicide crosses his mind, but he waves it away. He’s not that desperate. Yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments = Life, Love, and Happiness
> 
> Also no I am not continuing this.


End file.
